The Policy Lass

Take a tour around the climate denial-o-sphere and you will come across proof absolute that many people involved in discussing the issue of climate change and global warming just don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

Like Rick Perry, for example:

“I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

Luckily, he’s out, but srsly, he was the top runner for a while.

“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. …And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”

This is most distressing to those of us who acknowledge the reality of climate change / global warming because one of these folks could ultimately lead the US next year and to the man and woman, they are all in denial.

So what is denial? As the saying goes, “It ain’t a river in Egypt”…

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There’s a lot of confusion out there in the climate denialosphere over the title “Denier” vs. “Skeptic” and their proper application. Many deniers seem unable to recognize themselves in the mirror while others deny their denialist tendencies, like an addict who says they can quit anytime they want — really!

Some get really really upset that we call them Deniers.

Just to help them figure it all out, I decided to post the top ten signs that you’re a denier.

Public servant to the core, or what?

10. When you watch a story on the telly about global warming, you look out your window and see snow and heave a huge sigh of relief because snow means it’s cold out and therefore, there can be no global warming.

A climate scientist would say that weather is not climate and will warn you that even though the average global temperature may be warming, there will still be winter and there will still be snow and there will still be a change in temperature between summer and winter, day and night.

For more on this story, you can visit the inimitable Anthony Watts who regularly mines the “weather is a sign that there is not AGW” meme.

For the antidote, you can visit Skeptical Science: Does Cold Weather Disprove Global Warming?

9. When a climate scientist points out that weather is not climate, you point out that the climate scientist is living high off the hog at the public trough.

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The American Petroleum Institute (API) is launching yet another astroturf organization and campaign that misinforms the public about taxes on the fossil fuel industry and seeks to create a false sense of threat to jobs and access to energy. It’s a casebook example of a vested interest trying to frame the discourse — but that’s not all it does. It’s blatantly misleading.

Purporting to be the website of a grassroots movement of tens of thousands of “energy citizens” who are up in arms about the plans of those nasty anti-freedom un-American types to tax oil and GAS AND DESTROY JOBS OMGWTF!!!11 it’s nothing more than an attempt to protect its tax breaks by creating a false sense of threat to fossil fuel industry jobs.

It’s so crass and blatantly misleading that I’m disgusted and disheartened to think that anyone in his or her right mind would believe it.

Pure bunk.

Mother Jones covers the story here:

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Interesting development in the climtategate front.

Apparently, the Norfolk Constabulary made a visit to Tallbloke’s home with warrant in hand and a request to see his computer cache.

I gotta say it — 20 computers in his attic?

The response in the comments of Tallbloke’s post are hilarious!

Here’s Smokey:

Science blogging:

Encrypt
Encrypt
Encrypt

The feds couldn’t get Al Capone on his criminal syndicate, so they got him on income tax evasion. Word to the wise.☺

What’s funny is that Smokey refers to Al Capone, which isn’t the kind of comparison I’d like made about me – especially when there’s a criminal investigation of actions in which I may have been involved.

I’ll post updates as we get them.

UPDATE:

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You don’t need to watch the Comedy Channel to find great comedy any more. All you have to do, thanks to the wonders of the Intertubes, is to visit WTFIUWT and spend some time reading both the guest posts and the commentary. Be prepared to lose several heapings of IQ in doing so, but it’s good for a larf.

Case in point, the most recent post by none other than His Nibs, Viscount Christopher Moncton of Brenchley. The following excerpt is the most ideologically loaded pile of steaming bollocks analysis I’ve seen in quite some time. The way the Viscount portrays the Durban climate talks, you’d think a group of Bildersberg elites had teamed up with Lord Sauron himself to plot the total domination of the world!

The Viscount is clearly playing to the loonies, as the following shows.

I’ve bolded and italicized the pertinent words and phrases.

Here’s the Viscount:

The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.

Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.

The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.

Let’s do a little deconstruction, shall we?

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http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-global-warming-may-be-irreversible-by-2006,26808/

Say no more…